


The Prince that was promised

by snowspriestess



Series: One Shots [8]
Category: A Song of Ice and Fire & Related Fandoms, A Song of Ice and Fire - George R. R. Martin, Game of Thrones (TV)
Genre: F/M, Melisandre's POV during season 5-7, basically my take on what would have happened if Melisandre knew Jon's true parentage
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2017-08-26
Updated: 2017-08-26
Packaged: 2018-12-20 04:20:59
Rating: Teen And Up Audiences
Warnings: Creator Chose Not To Use Archive Warnings
Chapters: 1
Words: 2,135
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/11913093
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/snowspriestess/pseuds/snowspriestess
Summary: Three times Melisandre did not speak the truth, and one time she did.





	The Prince that was promised

**Author's Note:**

> most of the scenes described are taken from the season 5-7 from Game of Thrones, so credit goes to the show. I altered the dialoges a little and left some things out, so don't wonder why some things are a little different. I hope you enjoy <3

* * *

 

**I.**

 

It had been a dark night on the wall when she had seen it for the first time, within the midst of scarlet flames dancing in front of her.

The weeping girl in the tower, the war her betrothed started over it. The young dragon on his dark horse with rubies on his armor. Jon Snow’s long face staring at her from the flames as if it was mocking her. _You should have known,_ a voice said within her. _The first time you laid eyes on him, you should have known._

There were the wolf girl and the dragon, saying a sacred vow of marriage which made Jon Snow not only a legitimized child but also a lost Targaryen prince.

And more importantly, it gave him the gift of king’s blood. The power to cast shadows, the power to make king’s rise and fall. King’s like Stannis.

She was fearful, at first. Why had the lord not shown her earlier? They had been at the wall for weeks, the boy had been haunting her flames since their arrival. She had seen the signs, but not been able to make sense of them. But now it was all there, right in front of her. Ned Stark had fathered three sons, not four. However much the boy resembled him, he was no more than his uncle. Jon Snow’s true father had died at the trident many years ago, not lost his head in King’s Landing.

She had rushed out of her rooms that night, desperate to tell him. There was a power in him, a power much needed in the war to come, and he needed to embrace it. He needed to be ready to take on his destiny.

That had been the reason she had gone to his chambers, attempting to see whether he was ready to be his true self or not.

But she had soon come to realize he had not, indeed. Seated on his lap, feeling his heart beat quick under her fingertips, she had told him to embrace his powers, the powers to cast light and life, but also shadows. The only thing that mattered, in the great war.

Still, he had only looked at her from childish eyes and spoken of a woman and a love long lost and a life long ended the moment he put the black cloak back on. She had felt it when he had put the arrow in Mance Rayder’s heart, and she felt it yet again, when he refused her. After all, his heart was still with the old life he let, when was still no more than the bastard of Ned Stark and some woman without a name.

Melisandre had left that day, putting the matter to rest, but in her heart knowing the day would come. The day were the boy had to die and the man needed to be born. The day were duty and sacrifice must come before love and desire.

* * *

**II.**

 

The death of the boy came as she had foretold, just in a much more literal form than Melisandre could have imagined. When Davos Seaworth picked the lifeless Lord Commander up from the courtyard of Castle Black, her spirits died for a while. _She had waited too long,_ she doubted, _abandoned the true lord I serve._

But Jon Snow had risen under the hands of R’hllor and become the man he had meant to be, returning from the darkness of death and returning to the world.

She had meant to tell him afterwards, go to his chambers and explain the visions, but she had not found the courage to do so.

After all, she was still doubtful. The lord didn’t share as much with her as before, only ever the same images of ice and death marching on the wall. Jon Snow’s face was barely more than a shadow, appearing here and there at the corner of her eyes. It was never certain, always changing. She could never be certain if it was the lord’s wish that she told him or if it was meant to be hold back, waiting for the right time.

And Jon Snow became occupied with plans for war, abandoning the Night’s Watch and all that tied him still to his destiny. _Has he forgotten about what lies ahead?_ she had wondered, sitting at the council meetings and listening to endless hours about schemes and plots to take down mortal men. There was only one war which mattered, she had told him many moons ago, but he seemed to have forgotten.

The newborn men was wilder and more stubborn, after having executed the traitors something within him seemed to have changed. The child was gone, for sure, but he still did not appear to be ready.

And so Melisandre remained silent once more, listening to strategies and praying to her lord for an answer which never came.

_Am I wrong about him?_ she sometimes doubted, staring into the flames which were no more than fire these days. _Is he not our savior, but only a man lucky enough to escape death? No more than another lost prince?_

“Are you not cold, my lady?”, the boy had once asked her and she had denied, in endless faith in her lord and his light. These days, she was ever freezing. The doubt seemed to have crept into her bones and filled her from within. Even under her coat she was trembling sometimes, trembling in fear of being wrong once more.

Was R’hllor abandoning her because of her previous mistake? Was this the punishment of being wrong, a lecture about showing patience and obedience? She didn’t know and there was no way of being certain, and so she forgot about it once more and told herself she would recognize the time when it had come. Because one day, it would have to.

* * *

**III.**

 

He came into her tent that night, the night before the battle at Winterfell, asking for her advice. Only that she had nothing to give him. The fires had been silent for a while, the old vision of herself walking among the battlements of Winterfell seemed to have vanished into the past.

The looked doubtful, the new Commander, searching for help wherever he could. She wished she had hope to give him, some empty words which would make tomorrow look more bright. But she had not. And empty words had never been her calling.

“If I fall, don’t bring me back”, he had asked her, staring into the dancing flames as if he had wished to find his own destiny in them. She wished she could give him at least that, the comfort of death, but if the lord’s did indeed have greater plans with Jon Snow, she had to obey. She was the lord’s servant, after all, not some king’s or commander’s.

That night he had asked her the one question he had been to afraid to speak before, the question which answer could have solved the whole mystery once and for all. Why did he bring me back, he had asked, looking at her for the help she was not able to provide.

And once again she had not said it because she had looked at him and seen the doubts and fears of the boy still in there, somewhere hidden but still not gone. Telling him his whole life had been a lie before such a battle seemed cruel to her, too harsh for anyone to carry out. If it had been indeed her lord’s order that day, she had only failed him once more.

But her heart had told her to stay quiet, to reply nothing more than a half-meant “I don’t know”.

Revealing he was the lord’s chosen promised prince as well as the prince of the entire nation of Westeros seemed to hard for anyone to take before such a critical moment.

And besides, what would it change? Jon Snow had chosen the castle of Winterfell over his duty in the north, chosen the battle with some bastard boy over the real war which laid to the north. Perhaps he was not the lord’s chosen, after all.

He had different gods in his heart, gods that were unknown to her and that whispered in foreign tongues not even she could understand. She had felt their presence at the wall and felt them now at Winterfell, seeing their smiling faces carved in trees dancing through her flames. If the boy was R’hllor’s instrument, why did he not acknowledge the one true god? Why did he believe in false pretenders, with strange faces and ancient powers?

She had not slept that night, or the night after, not even when Winterfell had been conquered by the Stark’s and Jon Snow was sitting safely inside. He had one a small battle which mattered nothing in comparison to what was to come, and she could only hope that in his heart Jon still remembered the true enemy, if he was indeed her champion.

* * *

**IV.**

 

It was the moment he sent her away that she realized suddenly, with a burning pain in her chest, that she had waited to long. That every other time had been better than this one, which would seem like nothing more than a last desperate attempt to persuade him to let her stay.

He came to her one last time when she was preparing her horse, giving her the last chance to prepare him for what was to come. Because she had seen it, at last. She had seen the dragons come to Westeros and their mother with them, she had seen an armada of ships and men all ready to fight a gambling among little figures which were of no importance. They were all fighting for the wrong cause, but she had only one last attempt to make them understand.

But Jon Snow did not understand. When she spoke of dragons and wolves and a tower of joy he did not make the connection and to her words about himself being a prince and of king’s blood he did not listen.

“My father was no king”, he replied. “He was an honorable men, a great man, but no king.” And perhaps it was all her fault by now, or maybe it had just never meant to be, but certain was that R’hllor’s champion was going to fail if he did not lead his troops in the right direction.

There is only one war, she reminded him, only one war which mattered. The ancient war, the one that ever was and ever will be. Life against death. “Remember that, Jon Snow. Look north”, she told him with her last words before riding off, feeling his eyes follow her long after she had left the castle.

In the end, if he was truly the savior the world needed, he would know in his heart that her words had been the truth.

But she had seen other things in the fire, more alarming things, and she had seen them stepping closer with each passing day. Death was gathering beyond the wall, millions in the great other’s army ready to destroy them.

The lord had showed her those images for a reason and after weeks of doubt, she felt as certain as never before. Perhaps her own fate laid not with Jon Snow himself but rather in the background pulling the strings and the observation made her take the way to Dragonstone to meet the mother of dragons, proposing an alliance with the King in the North as Jon Snow was called now. _Ice and Fire, two parts of a great whole._

She could not do anything but place her hope in those two and trust in the lord and herself that she had done the right thing after all, although the right time had been missed.

The last time she laid eyes on Jon Snow was from high above him, standing atop a cliff and watching him taking the path to his destiny.

Three dragons were flying above Dragonstone, _dragon’s woken out of stone,_ and the salt of the sea mixed with the smoke of their fiery breath’s.

This was the place Jon Snow had meant to come, these were the things he was meant to see. The revelation would come, one day, and perhaps he would then have Daenerys Targaryen to lean on to.

When Melisandre let Westeros behind her and sailed for Volantis she knew that this was not the last time she would see this strange and foreign country, and that it had not been the last time she had set eyes upon a dragon. The day would come when she had to return, doing one last act in service of her lord before the world was ending.

 


End file.
